Music from hard drive better than CD?

Thank you Ghunter. Both excellent links. The first one did help me understand it better and is well-written...the Benchmark data was a bit more 'academic content-rich' and I need to read it again with more time. I guess I've got the basics down, but mine is far from an authorative knowledge on the subject. That simple illustration of amplitude error caused by jitter in the first link says a lot. I wasn't getting that clocking information is sent with the signal via S/PDIF. I didn't see Toslink mentioned in my quick read of the first link, though they do mention S/PDIF optical...are they one and the same? Here's a passage from that first link:

Remember that you can synchronise clocks in digital equipment with more than just the classic BNC cable. Both AES-EBU and S/PDIF (coax and optical) signals carry clock information within the audio data stream, for example, and so recorders can often be synchronised using their input signals, rather than having to use dedicated word-clock cables.

My understanding is that Toslink is the least desirable of the ways to transfer digital information...would the clocking have something to do with that? If not, what is it about Toslink that is frowned upon? Seems like it would be favored being so inexpensive. Or am I just wrong there?

Marco

Are there any good hard disk dedicated players? Rather not use a PC or Apple w/ full screen. What about the new McIntosh player? Any body tried it yet?

To address your question about toslink vs. coaxial: they both transmit the same spdif standard information so it's a matter of preference and what your equipment has. Some say that optical is more prone to jitter, but with jitter correction circuitry I'm sure you can see how any differences would be minimized to insignificant levels. A bit is a bit is a bit.

Two other commonly found digital audio transmission protocols are AES/EBU (which uses a balanced cable) and ADAT (which uses the exact same toslink fiber optic cable but has capacity for up to 8 audio channels).

Make sense?

Now to confuse matters even more, to get the ABSOLUTE best performance out of a digital audio setup you should use a master clock device such as the Apogee Big Ben:

http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/bigben.php

Yep, all that $1500 device does is generate ultra-accurate clock signals. Not many consumer DAC's offer word clock sync, perhaps because it's easy to reclock a single source more accurately than to synchronize multiple bidirectional audio streams that one might see in the studio. That's part of the home audio design I've never seen.

Henryhk, if you think about how quickly audio standards and software updates are happening, would you really want to be locked in to one manufacturer's way of doing things? The Linn and McIntosh units are definitely for people with massive disposable incomes that aren't familiar with computers. If that's you, then go for it and let us know. There's a lot more power and flexibility in going with a more open system, though.

Henryhk: I have heard good things about the McIntosh (thought it is priced at around ($5500). Yamaha has a hard disk player coming out soon (HD 1500 -- I think) that will cost substanitally less than the MAC (under 1K). They have one out right now as well (HD1300, I think -- it is referenced earlier in this thread).

I am still trying to decide between a computer based system and a hard drive system like the Yamaha.

Okay, I think I figured out what I am going to do. I am going to use a Macintosh Powerbook as my interface and drive, and add a firewire hardrive to store my music in a lossless format. The only thing left to consider is, how do I connect the computer to the pre-amp portion of my integrated, with good D/A conversion in between? Thus far the Apogee mini-dac with USB seems like the only (and possibly best) way to connect straight from the computer into my pre-amp while maintaining a very high quality of sound. Any other ideas?